Monster
by Caelta
Summary: There is a limit to how long one can hang on: to how long one can hope. Helen finds that Nikola may be moving on, and though it shouldn't, it terrifies her.


Seeing as I haven't been all that prolific recently, I sort of popped this out for a couple of reasons: a) because I needed to write _something _before exams leave me comatose and b) because it kinda sorta relates to a personal situation of my own (with the exception of a homicidal fiance). In any case, if it seems out of character, that's probably because it was in part a little rant of my own. I'm also contemplating a sequel, considering I don't overestimate by ability to work on several things at once. I'm still working on a couple other ideas for this ship (I promise!), so brace yourselves. As always, thanks for reading.

I do not own Sanctuary.

* * *

Monster. It was a word she rarely used, a term she wouldn't dare assign to any form of being she encountered, and yet, strangely enough, it was the only word that came to mind as she surveyed the vase of wilting roses perched on her desk.

They had been a gift from Nikola, along with a note portending a visit. That had been a week ago.

Today, he had taken flight.

Even as she knew she should have been getting on with the daily grind, crossing t's, dotting i's, crunching numbers—should have thrown out the week-old flowers—she couldn't bring herself to move from her position, staring across at her dying decoration as if it held the answers she desired.

The situation was all too familiar: her, frozen in ambivalence as her decisions grew farther and farther away, unable to make a move.

She was a woman who was not easily turned down; she was used to receiving precisely what she wanted, when she wanted it. But what happened if she didn't know what she wanted?

Today he had left, and she doubted he'd be coming back.

Not because she had ousted him, not because she had rejected him…not even because he'd worked himself into a frenzy, as he usually might. No, this had been different. A far cry from the typical fare.

He'd left without a word. Quietly, gracefully.

It hadn't bothered her until she'd realized he'd been holding back; on reflection of the past week, not once had he attempted to engage her in any real semblance of their traditional repartee. His efforts, at best, had been halfhearted.

Though this type of behavior usually preceded an intensive scientific breakthrough, he had barely made an appearance in the labs since he'd arrived.

When he had left, there had been another note, written in his familiar copperplate and placed neatly on her desk. Business.

He had informed her, in dark, scrawling letters, that he would be leaving for Versailles. He would not be alone, however—with him, he would be taking "the hottie from SCIU." This she had learned not from Nikola, but courtesy of Henry, who had overheard the vampire making reservations for two and wondered if she was in danger of an unwarranted vacation.

And so, the monster—gnawing on her self-preservation, peeling at her worth, clawing dim pathways towards longings she hadn't known she possessed and scraping raw feelings that ought not to be surfaced. It pressed itself to the back of her mind like a bad habit, oozing itself through any gap in her thoughts like blood from an open wound, and it reeked.

By the time she had wrapped her mind around it, which had taken another full week, there were profound cracks in her dignity that each pointed towards Nikola Tesla.

It wasn't the woman that concerned her, although her existence and intrusion certainly caused Helen grief, but it was more importantly what this woman meant. For decades Nikola had been at her heels, lavishing her with intrigue, and it was the sudden halt, a train she hadn't quite realized she'd boarded, that startled her monster into action.

Nikola had indulged this woman more than once: a thing he rarely did unless he was fairly serious.

Though they'd each had their separate lovers over the years, this was different. It spelled desertion, and she found that it ruffled her in a way that felt like terror.

Thus "the green-eyed monster reared its ugly head," and it stung all the more that these were the words that he himself had once read to her, quoted back to her, mocked her with in softness.

There had been a time that he'd exhausted her with Shakespeare, that she'd have rolled her eyes and waved him off for the effort, but not now. Now, it was a sickening irony.

She began to find in each item a new meaning, a spark that drew her attention away into the past, and it bereaved her all the more. A simple gesture from a teammate, a single word on a page, even a cognition of her own would send her thoughts swooping towards connections before she could stop herself.

A derisory comment from Will on Freud, and she was in Vienna, lying in a wreath of sunlight under a blue-eyed stare that she endeavored to ignore. A coin toss between Kate and Henry to decide the victor of a staring match, and she was thrown back to their first marvel at the burgeoning mint of America.

In the wake of all they had shared, even small things like the way he sometimes whispered Serbian to her in a crowd or the kaleidoscope patterns of the flecks of color in his eyes were now paramount.

For such a large period of their lives, she had been immobilized by her own predilection for the past. She had clung to it in favor of what she had shared with John, had let it blind her in the hope that somewhere beyond this bloodthirsty man she did not recognize there was still the man to whom she had pledged her life. Even once she had come into the knowledge that change was superfluous, it was this selfsame knowledge that arrested her for a second, much longer, stretch of time.

She had, she realized, taken him for granted. Only in separation—true separation, having been all but cut off—did she acknowledge what his proximity meant to her. For decades she'd been brushing him off without a second thought, trained in the knowledge that he'd always come back, grateful even, and yet now that he'd done the same to her…it smarted.

Somewhere in between the shuffle of papers and drone of brightly lit monitors, sometime late at night after everyone else had gone to bed and after her tea had gone cold and stale, it hit her. All the years crashed down on her in a crescendo that made her sick to the stomach, and she laid her throbbing head in her arms in an attempt to shut out the physical hurt that laced itself into the threads of her heart. He was the only one left worth hanging onto, and she'd pushed him away, too.

Her gut told her that it couldn't be like this, that it wasn't possible, yet her mind told her that it was, and that it was her fault. She had in essence done this to herself, loath as she was to admit it. It was her own shortcoming, her own myopia, and as much as she desired to, she couldn't pin this one on him. Though the strain of misery ached for her to blame someone, anyone, other than herself, she recognized that this was a habit that governed her for far too long.

She was a victim of herself. Ambivalence was itself a choice, and it was a choice that had now driven her into a void that could only dilate with time.

Time, however, was a relative term. Once one had lived and re-lived three lifetimes, punctuality suddenly seemed a lot more like a suggestion than a necessity. This was why, even as she was sore from the present, the past taught her that it may not have been too late.

When she finally threw out the flowers, it was to replace them with a bouquet of her own.


End file.
